10/12/03 4:45 AM: The word has been on the wind for months. The truth finally came out like Ellen or Chastity Bono. The king is dead -- Bill Jemas' reign at Marvel has come to an end.

When I read the news on my PowerBook screen, my first reaction was grim cheer. I've been pretty anti-Jemas his whole tenure -- from "... every minute" to "Death to Smoochy" -- and my comics pusher Steve keeps reminding me that Marvel regimes never last (unlike the normally long tenures of DC executives). Jemas, from my standpoint as a "fan" and "wannabe" in Los Angeles, was an attention hound. A vainglorious blowhard with more ambition than talent, as far as the creative process goes. During his time Black Panther lived under the sword of Damocles, Peter David's Captain Marvel was slapped around (and admittedly went into its most creative period ever) and a kind of WWE-style braggadocio came to be de rigeur.

But now those days are over. The admittedly widely loved Joe Quesada has largely taken the drama from his public persona in the past half year, and even through his wildest days at Jemas' side, never lost the adoration of the bulk of fandom. A new king has been crowned, a Dan Buckley who I've seen little data about on the web (admittedly, I'm not looking really hard).

On the other hand, there's a grown man -- a man somebody loves, a man who has dreams and fears like everybody else -- who has to drag himself into an office most of the week, with people staring at him like a pariah. Admittedly, he's pulling down more money in the next few months (his contract is up in January) than I'll make all year, and he'll be able to cash out something like a half-million shares of stock, currently at $28 a share. So he'll be crying into a big pile of money.

Still, I've been a well-paid pariah, with people looking at me sideways in meetings and hallways. There's a macabre kind of glee for the people who always wanted him to fall, but another world that we may never see. Everybody's pain is the worst pain in the world, because they can't see it from any other angle.

So yeah, I heard the news. Big whoop. I didn't get any assignments from Marvel while he was there, and I haven't seen any assignments come now he's "gone." It will be easier to not curse Marvel out, I suppose. I'm pleased about him not being in the credits of every Marvel book anymore, I'm glad Mark Waid is back on Fantastic Four (which I haven't read since the eighties before his run, and which Jemas was instrumental in seeing him gone), I'm glad Christopher Priest is working on a new Marvel project which will have no input from Jemas at all.

I don't know if I'm going soft or getting old or what, but I just don't take the same kind of gloating I once would have indulged in.

Stupid maturity ...